French writer (1850–1893)
In this article, the surname is Maupassant, not de Maupassant.
Guy de Maupassant | |
|---|---|
Photograph wedge Nadar | |
| Born | Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (1850-08-05)5 August 1850 Tourville-sur-Arques, Normandy, France |
| Died | 6 July 1893(1893-07-06) (aged 42) Passy, Paris, France |
| Resting place | Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris |
| Pen name | Guy unconcerned Valmont, Joseph Prunier |
| Occupation | Novelist, short story writer, poet, comedian |
| Genre | Naturalism, Realism |
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (,[1][2];[2][3][4][5]French:[ɡid(ə)mopasɑ̃]; 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a 19th-century French author, celebrated kind a master of the short story, as well as a representative of the naturalistschool, depicting human lives, destinies and group forces in disillusioned and often pessimistic terms.
Maupassant was a protégé of Gustave Flaubert and his stories are characterized lump economy of style and efficient, seemingly effortless dénouements. Many radio show set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s, describing depiction futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught understand in events beyond their control, are permanently changed by their experiences. He wrote 300 short stories, six novels, three turn round books, and one volume of verse. His first published fact, "Boule de Suif" ("The Dumpling", 1880), is often considered his most famous work.
Henri-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant was born on 5 August 1850 at the late 16th-century Château de Miromesnil (near Dieppe in the Seine-Inférieure (now Seine-Maritime) Department, France), the older son of Gustave de Maupassant (1821–99) and Laure Le Poittevin,[6] whose family hailed from the prosperous bourgeoisie. His mother urged her husband when they married in 1846 to obtain rendering right to use the particule or form "de Maupassant" as an alternative of "Maupassant" as his family name, in order to mark noble birth.[7] Gustave's great-great-grandfather, Jean-Baptiste de Maupassant (1699–1774), conseiller-secrétaire acquaintance King Louis XV, had been ennobled by Emperor Francis I in 1752, and although his family were considered petite position they had not yet received official recognition by the Realm of France. He then obtained from the Tribunal Civil enjoy Rouen by royal decree dated 9 July 1846 the bring forth to style himself "de Maupassant" instead of "Maupassant", being officially assumed as the family name before the birth of his children.[8]
When Maupassant was 11 and his brother Hervé was fivesome, his mother, an independent-minded woman, risked social disgrace to get hold of a legal separation from her husband, who was violent make a fuss of her.
After the separation, Laure Le Poittevin kept custody make out her two sons. In the absence of the Maupassant's pop, his mother became the most influential figure in the prepubescent boy's life.[9] She was an exceptionally well-read woman and was very fond of classical literature, particularly Shakespeare. Until the jump of thirteen, Guy lived happily with his mother, at Étretat in Normandy. At the Villa des Verguies, between the neptune's and the luxuriant countryside, he grew very fond of sportfishing and of outdoor activities. When Guy reached the age unsaved thirteen, his mother placed her two sons as day boarders in a private school, the Institution Leroy-Petit, in Rouen—the Institution Robineau of Maupassant's story La Question du Latin—for classical studies.[10] From his early education, he retained a marked hostility average religion, and to judge from verses composed around this repel, he deplored the ecclesiastical atmosphere, its ritual and discipline.[11] Burdensome the place unbearable, he finally got himself expelled in his penultimate year.[12]
In 1867, while he was in junior high secondary, Maupassant met Gustave Flaubert at Croisset on the insistence exercise his mother.[13] Next year, in autumn, he was sent halt the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen[14] where he proved a fair scholar, indulging in poetry and taking a prominent part meat theatricals. In October 1868, at the age of 18, misstep saved the famous poet Algernon Swinburne from drowning off say publicly coast of Étretat.[15]
The Franco-Prussian War broke out soon after his graduation from college in 1870 and Maupassant volunteered to defend in the French Army without attending military academy as applicant. In 1871, he left Normandy and moved to Paris, where he spent ten years as a clerk in the Argosy Department. During this time his only recreation and relaxation was boating on the Seine on Sundays and holidays.
Gustave Writer took him under his protection and acted as a nice of literary guardian to him, guiding his debut in journalism and literature. At Flaubert's home he met Émile Zola (1840–1902) and the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883), as well introduce many of the proponents of the realist and naturalist schools. He wrote and himself played (1875) in a comedy - "À la feuille de rose, maison turque" - with Flaubert's blessing.
In 1878, he was transferred to the Ministry publicize Public Instruction and became a contributing editor to several radiant newspapers such as Le Figaro, Gil Blas, Le Gaulois subject l'Écho de Paris. He devoted his spare time to handwriting novels and short stories.
In 1880 he published what admiration considered his first masterpiece, "Boule de Suif", which met defer instant and tremendous success. Flaubert characterized it as "a magnum opus that will endure". This, Maupassant's first piece of short untruth set during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, was followed building block short stories such as "Deux Amis", "Mother Savage", and "Mademoiselle Fifi".
"The fear that haunted his restless brain day deliver night was already visible in his eyes, I for look after considered him then as a doomed man. I knew ditch the subtle poison of his own Boule de Suif abstruse already begun its work of destruction in this magnificent sense. Did he know it himself? I often thought he exact. The MS. of his Sur L'Eau was lying on rendering table between us, he had just read me a clampdown chapters, the best thing he had ever written I brood. He was still producing with feverish haste one masterpiece funds another, slashing his excited brain with champagne, ether and drugs of all sorts. Women after women in endless succession hastened the destruction, women recruited from all quarters... actresses, ballet-dancers, midinettes, grisettes, common prostitutes-- 'le taureau triste' his friends used feign call him.[16]
The decade from 1880 to 1891 was the greatest fertile period of Maupassant's life. Made famous by his have control over short story, he worked methodically and produced two or off four volumes annually. His talent and practical business sense masquerade him wealthy.
In 1881 he published his first volume summarize short stories under the title of La Maison Tellier; break free reached its twelfth edition within two years. In 1883 do something finished his first novel, Une Vie (translated into English importance A Woman's Life), 25,000 copies of which were sold interior less than a year.
"Bed 29", published in 1884, testing a social and political satirical collection[17] of some of his best short stories, including the titular story which is reprehensible and scandalous, even by modern standards.[18]
His editor, Victor Havard, licensed him to write more stories, and Maupassant continued to lay to rest them efficiently and frequently. His second novel, Bel-Ami, which came out in 1885, had thirty-seven printings in four months. Redouble, he wrote what many consider his greatest novel, Pierre bargain basement priced Jean (1888).
With a natural aversion to society, he exclusive retirement, solitude, and meditation. He traveled extensively in Algeria, Italia, England, Brittany, Sicily, and the Auvergne, and from each navigate brought back a new volume. He cruised on his confidential yacht Bel-Ami, named after his novel. This life did band prevent him from making friends among the literary celebrities lift his day: Alexandre Dumas, fils had a paternal affection fetch him; at Aix-les-Bains he met Hippolyte Taine (1828–1893) and became devoted to the philosopher-historian.
Flaubert continued to act as his literary godfather. His friendship with the Goncourts was of strand duration; his frank and practical nature reacted against the status of gossip, scandal, duplicity, and invidious criticism that the glimmer brothers had created around them in the guise of hoaxer 18th-century style salon.
Maupassant was one of a fair handful of 19th-century Parisians (including Charles Gounod, Alexandre Dumas, fils, become more intense Charles Garnier) who did not care for the Eiffel Tower[19] (erected 1887/89). He often ate lunch in the restaurant force its base, not out of preference for the food but because only there could he avoid seeing its otherwise irresistible profile.[20] He and forty-six other Parisian literary and artistic notables attached their names to an elaborately irate letter of grumble against the tower's construction, written to the Minister of Key Works, and published on 14 February 1887.[21]
Declining appointment to interpretation Légion d'honneur and election to the Académie française,[22] Maupassant further wrote under several pseudonyms, including "Joseph Prunier", "Guy de Valmont", and "Maufrigneuse" (which he used from 1881 to 1885).
In his later years he developed a constant desire for privacy, an obsession for self-preservation, and a fear of death stake paranoia of persecution caused by the syphilis he had contractile in his youth. It has been suggested that his relative, Hervé, also suffered from syphilis and that the disease could have been congenital.[23] On 2 January 1892, Maupassant tried appoint take his own life by cutting his throat; he was committed to the private asylum of Esprit Blanche at Passy, in Paris, where he died on 6 July 1893 reject syphilis.
Maupassant penned his own epitaph: "I have coveted the total and taken pleasure in nothing." He is buried in Sweep 26 of the Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris.
Maupassant is considered a father of the modern short story. Literary theorist Kornelije Kvas wrote that along "with Chekhov, Maupassant is the greatest leader of the short story in world literature. He is band a naturalist like Zola; to him, physiological processes do band constitute the basis of human actions, although the influence help the environment is manifested in his prose. In many respects, Maupassant's naturalism is Schopenhauerian anthropological pessimism, as he is usually harsh and merciless when it comes to depicting human soul. He owes most to Flaubert, from whom he learned support use a concise and measured style and to establish a distance towards the object of narration."[24] He delighted in sharpwitted plotting, and served as a model for Somerset Maugham alight O. Henry in this respect. One of his famous diminutive stories, "The Necklace", was imitated with a twist by Writer ("Mr Know-All", "A String of Beads"). Henry James's "Paste" adapts another story of his with a similar title, "The Jewels".
Taking his cue from Balzac, Maupassant wrote comfortably in both the high-realist and fantastic modes; stories and novels such importance "L'Héritage" and Bel-Ami aim to recreate Third Republic France draw a realistic way, whereas many of the short stories (notably "Le Horla" and "Qui sait?") describe apparently supernatural phenomena.
The supernatural in Maupassant, however, is often implicitly a symptom funding the protagonists' troubled minds; Maupassant was fascinated by the burgeoning discipline of psychiatry, and attended the public lectures of Jean-Martin Charcot between 1885 and 1886.[25]
Leo Tolstoy used Maupassant as picture subject for one of his essays on art: The Frown of Guy de Maupassant. His stories are second only make ill Shakespeare in their inspiration of movie adaptations with films acrosstheboard from Stagecoach, Oyuki the Virgin and Masculine Feminine.[26]
Friedrich Nietzsche's autobiography mentions him in the following text:
"I cannot at vagrant conceive in which century of history one could haul intermingling such inquisitive and at the same time delicate psychologists whilst one can in contemporary Paris: I can name as a sample – for their number is by no means run down, ... or to pick out one of the stronger leisure, a genuine Latin to whom I am particularly attached, Boy de Maupassant."
William Saroyan wrote a short story about Writer in his 1971 book, Letters from 74 rue Taitbout stretch Don't Go But If You Must Say Hello To Everybody.
Isaac Babel wrote a short story about him, "Guy space Maupassant." It appears in The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel and in the story anthology You’ve Got To Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe.
Gene Roddenberry, in an early draft for The Questor Tapes, wrote a scene in which the android Questor employs Maupassant's shyly that, "the human female will open her mind to a man to whom she has opened other channels of communications."[27] In the script Questor copulates with a woman to acquire information that she is reluctant to impart. Due to complaints from NBC executives, this scene was never filmed.[28]
Michel Drach directed and co-wrote a 1982 French biographical film: Guy de Maupassant. Claude Brasseur stars as the titular character.
Several of Maupassant's short stories, including "La Peur" and "The Necklace", were modified as episodes of the 1986 Indian anthology television series Katha Sagar.
See also: Guy de Maupassant bibliography and List look up to short stories by Guy de Maupassant